With Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard entering the final stretch of development, overzealous Apple advocates are turning to discussion boards and file sharing websites to show off image and video captures taken from the next generation OS, most recently highlighting features such as simplified security preferences, enhanced searching, QuickTime X's screen recording function and a new version of Image Capture.

On Monday, attention was drawn to a YouTube user's webpage brandishing over a half dozen Snow Leopard demonstration videos, five of which were subsequently removed by the user while another was yanked from the video sharing website after Apple waged a copyright claim. Since then, readers have pointed to a long-running thread over at the French-language MacGeneration website that's serving as yet another forum offering Snow Leopard-related discussion illustrated by numerous screenshots and videos.

QuickTime X Screen Recording

Readers are free to navigate the thread on their own, though AppleInsider has extracted a handful images showing off some features that have received limited coverage in the past or haven't been represented fully in imagery, such as the recently-reported screen recording options due to arrive as part of QuickTime X Player 1.0. Portions of the native recording interface can be seen in the alert below, which initiates a screen capture session and directs the user to a menu bar option to end a session.

Once a user has concluded a Screen Recording session, the following interface and options provide a means of saving and exporting movies files in different sizes and formats.

QuickTime X also offers options for publishing supported movie files to iTunes in one of three pre-set sizes. From iTunes, they can be synced with an iPhone, iPod, or Apple TV:

New Image Capture App

Also worth noting is that Image Capture has grown as an application to adopt a user interface that is more like iTunes and the Finder, with a sidebar for devices, main window for file info and a thin row of controls lining the bottom of the application.

Universal Keyboard Shortcuts

Preference panes are also showing a convergence of UI as shown in this screenshot of the new Keyboard & Mouse preference pane:

Advanced Security Options

As always, Apple takes Security seriously. At the same time, it doesn't want to intimidate less savvy users from taking advantage of all the Mac has to offer. The below example demonstrates a simplified and easy to manage option that helps keep users safe while on the net.

Chinese Handwriting Recognition

With the private release of the most recent Snow Leopard beta, Apple also informed developers about the addition of Chinese handwriting recognition support for Macs that include a multi-touch trackpad. Similar software was added to iPhone Software 2.0 a year ago, allowing users to draw Chinese symbols on their handset's touchscreen and then select matching symbols suggested by the iPhone Software. This feature can be seen in action for the first time in the below YouTube video:

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is expected to hit the market sometime this summer with a near finalized version now confirmed to make an appearance at Apple's annual developers conference during the second week of June.

OK, here's something I wish they'd "fix"... If you've ever entered Screen Sharing in iChat, you'd notice that these little 'invite' screens and 'confirmation' screens pop up outside the main app window and they REMAIN once the session has been broken. Why in the blue blazes they don't simply keep these extra buttons on the main interface is completely bewildering to me. Let's clean this junk up, Apple.

OK, Apple REALLY needs to stick with a consistent UI scheme. Having different skins for everything makes it seem non-cohesive or whatever.. would you all agree?

We're looking at older versions of SL that are being leaked. We have no idea what Apple intends to implement for a system wide UI theme, and, indeed, they are likely to be holding back on that for this very reason (leaks).

They spoke of the sayings and doings of their commander, the grand duke, and told stories of his kindness and irascibility.

is that a television to go with the apple tv, or is it the larger tablet we keep hearing about?

It definitely looks like an Apple product, so is it just good icon design or something else? Usually, you just see the AppleTV by itself in graphics/icons. Someone better fan this flame quick and start spreading the rumors.

The screen capture is not nearly as good as ScreenFlow, though they do make it function from the Menu Bar like SF, even though they dont show the image in the article. The frame rates are less which makes the video choppier, there is no simultaneous recording via the iSight camera, audio wouldnt work from any source (though that will obvious change) and the editing features after the fact are weak. On top of that, the encoding in QTX is very slow. This is the only app that seems to be lagging far behind the rest in SL, but things will definitely improve, even though 3rd-party solutions may still be better. I say just buy ScreenFlow and integrate it.

I kind of feel sorry now for all the devs who've put so much time into writing screen recording apps for OSX. I mean, it's something that i've felt should have been built in since i was an 8 year old using OS 9.. but, for the most part, this kills alot of products by alot of developers.

We're looking at older versions of SL that are being leaked. We have no idea what Apple intends to implement for a system wide UI theme, and, indeed, they are likely to be holding back on that for this very reason (leaks).

True...I guess it's still possible they may do away with Aqua blue scroll bars and have the pale blue ones used in iTunes.

You're almost certainly trolling, but anyway, previous versions of OS X that didn't have a consistent UI looked clumsy and a bit amateurish. So there is a good reason to want to avoid it.

I'm not trolling. Someone asked if everybody agreed. I figured since I'm part of "everybody" and I don't agree that I should reply with my genuine feelings. I honestly think that people carry the consistency torch to their own detriment.

Two of these pencils are a familiar yellow, so I know what they're for and how to use them. But, OMG, the others are so confusing and completely unusable. Good grief.

I quite like the new look of QuickTime... and who knows, it might be a small clue as to an overall UI overhaul for Snow Leopard...

I agree Apple has often introduced little hints to what lies ahead in hardware as well as GUI design. I remember the first G3 towers (the beige ones) had a transparent green plastic button which opened to the inside. The first iMac, Bondi blue came out about a year later. OS X and it's candy drop interface was a melding of software and hardware with the fruit colored iMacs. The austere Pro machines and the recent Aluminum look throughout the hardware and Finder windows. The black edged displays, iPhone and Macbook keys all are trending towards black as the new white. I'm very excited about the refinements coming to Snow Leopard, unlike some I prefer a smooth evolution to radical jumps.

I don't mind the black title bar but I just don't foresee toolbars looking that good in black, and they would also result in rather thick black chunks at the tops of windows.

I also find it a bit surprising when Safari 4 seems to suggest at slight changes to the GUI (which I still think suck) that would also rather fail if things went black. Less surprising but nightmarish would be Safari 4's title bar tab structure hitting other apps, e.g. Finder, QT.

Interestingly QuickTime's interface is quite similar to QuickLook's - maybe that's their QuickGUI?

As for universal keyboard shortcuts, the concept came in in Panther IIRC, and in the almost six years since, custom shortcuts have NEVER stuck beyond a few restarts - the prefpane consistently just forgets they were ever there, rendering ever making any, completely pointless. Even if they could just fix that it would pretty much be a worthwhile update.

I kind of feel sorry now for all the devs who've put so much time into writing screen recording apps for OSX. I mean, it's something that i've felt should have been built in since i was an 8 year old using OS 9.. but, for the most part, this kills alot of products by alot of developers.

It only kills the most basic products. And there's still a lot those developers haven't done yet. Like making it easy to pause on a frame for a set duration. Or easily add flexible text annotations. Or have the interface clickable during playback to allow navigation through a screencast...

As someone who makes a ton of screencasts I've found the Mac tools somewhat lacking. Screenflow is good but not comprehensive. There's significantly more to be done.

Man, what gives? Shapeshifter for OS 9 had themes that were light years ahead of this tired and worn look, plus it had more customizable functionality.

The black bar is ok, but the rest of the OS needs to look the same, or give us some control of our own desktop appearance.

My biggest complaint is the stupid little translucent ball on a translucent dock that is almost impossible to see... to signify the app is open. Seriously... give me back the black triangle from Panther at least if your going to make such stupid design decisions like that one.

I don't mind the black title bar but I just don't foresee toolbars looking that good in black, and they would also result in rather thick black chunks at the tops of windows.

I agree with you if I'm looking at what you're looking at. I don't see Apple moving to QuickTime X's translucent black title bar for other applications. That ignores the whole point of QuickTime X's translucent title bar: that it fades away to show...the video playing. Most applications have buttons just beneath the title bar, so a black translucent top would look horrible.

A more realistic change would be the replacement of the current black-text-on-white theme of the Menu Bar (which is shared by other contextual menus) with something similar to QuickTime X's white-text-on-black theme.

Yes I agree 100%! Quicktime being the only application with that black bar seems weird.

Note, though, that the screen shots are of QT driven modal states, not "app windows" per se (a start recording toggle, probably invoked in the services menu or via keyboard shortcut, an export/size dialogue box and the floating transport control).

If you look closely at the export screen, you can see that the "black menu bar" is actually overlaying the frontmost app being recorded, so this is a new state for OS X-- the idea of a process "being done to" an open app without closing that app, operating under the assumption that that process is a temporary state that will be invoked and dismissed while primary focus remains on the open, frontmost app.

As such, it's not surprising that Apple would come up with a different windowing convention. Remember that "Quicktime" is properly understood as a cluster of technologies underlying much of Apple's media services, the "Quicktime Player App" has always been a bit of an odd duck.

What's being shown are Quicktime technologies at work in much the same way that the genie effect is Core Animation at work. The difference is that for what's being done there needs to be user input, so there has to be some kind of distinguishing UI-- but one that doesn't rise to the level of an open and functioning "app."

They spoke of the sayings and doings of their commander, the grand duke, and told stories of his kindness and irascibility.

Man, what gives? Shapeshifter for OS 9 had themes that were light years ahead of this tired and worn look, plus it had more customizable functionality.

The black bar is ok, but the rest of the OS needs to look the same, or give us some control of our own desktop appearance.

So what exactly is fugly then? Unless you consider the way things look in Leopard fugly in general. The only thing that's different is the title bar, so what are you calling ugly?

Quote:

Originally Posted by rain

My biggest complaint is the stupid little translucent ball on a translucent dock that is almost impossible to see... to signify the app is open. Seriously... give me back the black triangle from Panther at least if your going to make such stupid design decisions like that one.

It only kills the most basic products. And there's still a lot those developers haven't done yet. Like making it easy to pause on a frame for a set duration. Or easily add flexible text annotations. Or have the interface clickable during playback to allow navigation through a screencast...

As someone who makes a ton of screencasts I've found the Mac tools somewhat lacking. Screenflow is good but not comprehensive. There's significantly more to be done.

It doesn't kill them at all. In fact, it provides them a clean API to then extend for their applications which as you noted go beyond the basics.

Guys... do you think Apple would start changing the look of apps randomly?

This doesn't strike me as a random change. In fact, it seems very logical to have the UI elements of a video window fade away during playback (or screen capturing, which QTX will gain in Snow Leopard).